DLnet

Digital Libraries Network is for health librarians and trainers in the UK, interested in promotion and training.

Friday, April 30, 2004

Managing Knowledge in Health Services

In case you missed the announcement earlier this week, Andrew Booth and Graham Walton have arranged for the text of their book, published in 2000, to be made available on the web free of charge.

The announcement says:
"We believe that most of the 'how to do it'-type chapters and many of the overviews from this work, now out of print, are still very relevant for health information professionals today. Chapters include:

Health services: a contemporary approach

Health service users of information

Health service libraries

Health service information providers

Consumer health information

Providing direction and management for health library and information services

Identifying users' needs

Making a case

Identifying resources

Organizing information resources

Delivering and accessing resources

Marketing a service

Evaluating information services

Training the users

Formulating the question

Keeping up to date with the knowledge base

This move has been timed to coincide with the publication of our completely new work Exploiting Knowledge in Health Services released this month by Facet Publishing. This new work mirrors the structure of its predecessor but covers a completely new range of topics. Chapters of this NEW work include:

Section 1 The context of managing the knowledge base in health services

Wednesday, April 28, 2004

Searching for Evidence Clinical Governance Advice No 3

Here is something helping you plan a session for O&G departments . It is advice from the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, called Searching for the EvidenceI used it as a guide for training some SHOs from one of our O&G departments.

It follows similar steps included on the NeLH handouts, using examples from the O&G field.

Facilitation skills training - opportunity

This day will equip you with the skills to facilitate group discussions including active listening, effective questioning and handling difficult situations. Facilitation skills will help you in situations requiring you to work effectively with groups to achieve shared goals. The training will enable you to learn from colleagues and from an experienced facilitator.

Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons, Glasgow 10.00-16.30
The day will be led by Gillian Strachan, an organisational development consultant.
Cost: £70
Numbers are restricted to 15

Contact: Cathel Kerr (clkerr@btopenworld.com)

Sounds like a great opportunity and very reasonably priced - plus I'm sure you can find cheap air fares to Glasgow ;-)

Thursday, April 22, 2004

Passport scheme

We've had a passport scheme in Manchester health libraries for some years, but are only now in the process of producing eye-catching literature to hand to potential users. Most libraries in our scheme offer physical access to libraries, PCs etc. Some (us for instance) allow users to enrol on traiing sessions. Very few, as yet, allow external users (you know what I mean) to actually borrow materials, which must be the next step. Speaking as a potential health consumer rather than as a health librarian, I'd find it hard to understand the rationale whereby an NHS could not visist and use any library that was convenient. What do others think?

Library Services Passport

A regular comment I hear from staff is "I don't work there, didn't know I could use that library".

All libraries in the Avon, Glos and Wiltshire region area have a reciprocal arrangement whereby staff can use any library, regardless of their employing Trust. To complement this we have a Library Services Passport - a nifty little A5 leaflet giving basic contact details for all major NHS libraries in the AGW region. It also details exactly what people can expect access to in terms of services, whether they are AGW NHS staff, NHS from further afield, students on placements etc.

It's useful for both library users and staff as it neatly summarises where libraries are and what
services are available. It's particularly useful if users work across several Acute Trusts which is often the case for PCT and Mental Health Staff.

An online version can be found at http://www.agw-wdc.nhs.uk/pubs/el_lib/el_lib_passport.pdf

The eagle-eyed among you will notice the cover features a couple of nurses engrossed in Anatomy TV - be assured we're working on the new 2004/05 version and the photo will be updated.

New look for National Library of Medicine website

The National Library of Medicine will be releasing an entirely new design and modified organizational structure for its main Web site, http://www.nlm.nih.gov , on May 10, 2004. These changes are a result of extensive usability testing and consumer feedback. The new design retains many elements of the current site, amongst other things it now features:

-"portal" pages for the public, health care professionals, researchers, librarians, and publishers;
-up-to-date news on the home page;
-a top navigation bar including a search box on every page;
-a printer-friendly version option on many pages.

No URLs will change as a result of the redesign, and the site will download faster than before. For more information on features of the new design go to http://www.nlm.nih.gov/about/nlmredesign.html

Thursday, April 15, 2004

Learn more about the electronic Library for Social Care

28 April – eLSC online tours for librarians

Sue Jardine, from the Social Care Institute for Excellence, will be running a 10-minute guided tour around the electronic Library for Social Care (eLSC). The tour will run twice, at 10.00 and at 3.00, and is open to anyone who is interested in learning more about the eLSC.

Novel use for NeLH cigarette lighters

Those of you who were also on the DLnet conference in Birmingham recently might like to hear of Lucy's (our Deputy Librarian) interesting idea for using those NelH cigarette lighters that we all won in the quiz. She's taken to carrying it around with her to the three different health libraries she works in - so far, so what, I hear you say, but read on and I guarantee you'll be amazed - and plugging it into the back of whichever computer she's working on!

At first I assumed that this was just some new "yoof" fashion statement, but turns out that as well as being a not very satisfactory cigarette lighter, this gizmo doubles as some sort of removable hard disc for your PC! Again, if you attended the conference you might have observed from watching my masterly attempts to work out how to switch on my new portable telephone (Lucy, please check I've used the correct terminology here, will you?) that ICT is just one of my many accomplishments. Working on the assumption that many of you, like me, might not yet have got around to unpacking this delightful free gift, I thought I'd pass on the above tip for helping you get the most of yours.

P.S. Alison - I think the one I got must have a duff flint in it as I can't get the wretched thing to spark. Any ideas where I can buy a replacement?

Thursday, April 08, 2004

The Map of Medicine

I hope to take this opportunity to introduce you to the Map of Medicine, and, for those who have heard of it, to keep you up-to-date.

The Map of Medicine is an online clinical resource that supports daily clinical practice, clinical governance and risk management. The Map takes the form of 240, and increasing, patient pathways or journeys.

Like an A-Z ‘The Map’ helps clinicians to find and use specialist level knowledge. Each patient journey starts from first presentation e.g. to a Primary Care provider or A&E, usually with specific symptoms, through referral to a Consultant in a hospital and back to Primary Care for further management as required.

The Map of Medicine is fully localisable and has been designed to be aesthetically pleasing and intuitive to use.

The initial development work was carried out at the Royal Free and UCL hospitals and associated general practices. Over 250 clinicians have been involved in creating the Map’s content. Medic-to-Medic (http://medic-to-medic.com) publishes the Map of Medicine.

The Map of Medicine and NeLH are partnered in delivering a programme of work for the National Knowledge Service to integrate NeLH with the ICRS (Integrated Care Records Service) (Toth, B. 2004 The National Knowledge Infrastructure. National Knowledge Service http://www.nks.nhs.uk/docs/The%20National%20Knowledge%20Infrastructure%20v%201.0.pdf).

You may have heard about the Map of Medicine from Dr. Mike Stein, Medical Director of Medic-to-Medic, Muir Gray or Ben Toth, Co-Directors of the NeLH. Over the next weeks and months I will keep you informed of developments by emailing this list and posting to the DLnet weblog. Also, we expect to send many of you a CD-ROM to demonstrate the Map of Medicine later this spring.
Laura

More Midwifery

The full-text of the MIDIRS Informed Choice leaflets ARE stilll available free of charge on the Web, but not on the main MIDIRS site linked to from the NeLH homepage.

To find them log in to http://www.infochoice.org/ which takes you to the Informed Choice site itself. Here you'll find the full-text of all 15 titles - each title has two versions, one for midwives and one for the women in their care. Both cover the same ground but the women's version is written in plain English with no medical jargon. All can be downloaded as pdfs.

Incidentially don't confuse this url with the very similar http://www.informedchoice.org/ or you'll be whisked off to Wisconsin and have a lovely choice of funeral caskets and cremation options - an Informed Final Choice perhaps

Wednesday, April 07, 2004

Auditing our communications

I dip into the Library PR site now and again - although it has a lot related to public libraries, there's the odd nugget relevant to all types of library. One of their recent editorials talks about running a communications audit to evaluate all the internal and external communication so you can find out who's listening to you and what messages they are getting. The article recommends an agency which I'm guessing is beyond most library budgets (!) but it could be something that colleagues could help out with. Maybe DLnet members could help each other run informal audits? ;-)

Comings and Goings

You all know the saying 'you never get a second chance to make a first impression' and 'last impressions last'. I thought I would say something about beginnings and endings e.g. when you start a new job or a new training session. At a conference I went to Creatifica (www.creatifica.com) talked about good gestalts and bad gestalts. Basically, the concept is that memories are stored like strings of pearls, a new memory being added to a string that goes back to the first memory. So, chances are that if you start well you that is likely to be stored as a good memory and the next meeting will link back to that memory and build on this as a string of good memories ie a good gestalt. We all know what happens if you have a bad memory - further events will be linked back to that bad memory ie a bad gestalt. In terms of ending, I know that we all like to feel indispensable and that people need us but I would say that a good aim in training would be to leave people less dependent on you than they were before!

Tuesday, April 06, 2004

City and Guilds 7307 & other courses

Further to Zoe's & Tricia’s contributions re City and Guilds 7307, Reps might like to know about The Institute of IT Training, IITT. I haven’t taken a course yet so cannot comment, but the NHSIA have recommended them. The following is from the IITT website:

“Membership of the IITT is "strongly recommended" by the NHS, within the document "Professional", this can be found by at:

The Training Foundation's TAP programme is the recommended training standard within the NHS for IT trainers.
Through either a three-day (Delivery Skills Refresher) or five-day (Training Delivery Skills) course, you will be assessed as to your training ability using the TAP methodology.

If you wish to discuss TAP in more detail, please call Anu Nakra on 024 7641 1288, or e-mail her at a.nakra@trainingfoundation.com”

There is also a link to The Certified e-Learning Professional (CeLP) programme, which “offers over 300 hours of certificated on-line courses for e-Learning Developers, e-Learning Tutors, e-Learning Trainers, e-Learning Managers and e-Learning Consultants, with further study leading to the Diploma in e-Learning.”

Training - CPD

Hi all
Just been on The Training Zone website - www.trainingzone.co.uk - and found an article about CPD for trainers:

"The key to success in training is self-discipline, understanding the philosophy and implementation of continuous professional development.

Trainers need to be aware of the latest practices and develop their own approaches to delivering training sessions if they are to keep their work lively and fresh.

Peer Review
To manage your own professional development, the first step should be feedback on sessions from a fellow trainer.

Invite a colleague to attend a session and provide a critique on it.

While no-one enjoys direct criticism, objective feedback is crucial if you are to get an outside eye.

It can also be beneficial for the person giving feedback too, as they may well pick up a few hints!"

This can be a daunting and challenging thing to do, but it does really help to evaluate what you're doing, both the content of your sessions, and the way that you train. If you have another trainer or librarian nearby who's willing to help, it's worth giving it a go. And then you can do it back to them and get your own back!

Friday, April 02, 2004

Dr Foster

I wonder if you all know about this wonderful website? I was reminded recently when asked about where patients could find out about Consultants, hospitals etc. Try Dr Fosters

Claire Rayner, President, Patients' Association says of the site "This is a truly remarkable resource. For the first time, I can find out what I want to know about local health services. It’s the most authoritative measure of healthcare standards available anywhere in the world"

There are also lots of guides for patients and professionals. Free access to all guides for health professionals, much open access for the public, but some areas protected by 'Premium Content' subscription. Just the kind of thing District and Practice nurses will find useful.

Thursday, April 01, 2004

Taking Training to the Users

My first post so here goes....

Here in Bristol we had particular success with a project to provide information skills training for midwives. Nothing new in that you may think. True, but we provided the training sessions on central delivery suite (CDS), using a small resource room within the building - something I'm not aware of having been done before.

It did involve working quite closely with the directorate employing midwives, to set up and iron out any wrinkles. Midwifery took the bookings, knowing that every Wednesday the trainer would be present on CDS for two sessions accommodating four people per session. This helped the midwives take on ownership and not see this as something being imposed on them from another part of the Trust. Working closely with midwifery also helped us publicise the service - we had a launch event with a presentation, tea and buns and from time to time I would visit the wards with a midwifery manager to drum up interest when things were looking a little slack. Being under their noses on CDS meant that they saw what was going on, and often midwives would turn up at the last minute if things were quiet at the time.

The sessions focused on increasing awareness of the range of information sources available online - NeLH and the midwifery specialist library, Cochrane, search skills, and our local NHS library website. One of the key resources was also MIDIRS - I fully appreciate the irony that as of today the NeLH/MIDIRS resource had been discontinued.

It was great to help join services up for users. On one accasion a midwife was interested in finding information to support a job application. We did a search and then identified which journals were easily accessible in the library - "I've not been in the library in years" she admitted. Soon after the training session she arrived in the library and eagerly photocopied some of the articles we had found. It even has a happy ending as she got the job.

Can't really see any reason why this type of things couldn't be spun off and provided for physios, OTs and other professional groups with a little creative thinking. I think providing the training on their home turf really was the key to the success of the project - something which a lot of outreach librarians already appreciate and use to their advantage.

If anyone would like a little more nitty-gritty detail do get in touch